PB2 pt. 1 // New Music Platforms Hold Less Meaning For Listeners

The short comic above illustrates the contrast in how people shared music in the past to how they share it presently. New music platforms have diminished the listening experience for avid music patrons. One example of how this has happened is through the progression of ‘Mix-tapes’, to a burned CD, and now the sharing of a playlist via a streaming platform.  This example showcases the physicality, personalization, as well as the nature of the listening process that is lost in New media platforms.

When considering the differences in these mediums and what we have lost as music patrons with the advent of streaming the first thing that came to my mind was the effort and with that the significance. Cassettes and Mix Tapes exemplify this to the max due to the fact that they were used to communicate feelings from one person to another – occasionally even acting much like a love letter. Bennet writes about the effort behind making a mix tape and the endless hours someone may have spent trying to make it perfect:

“It took hours to make: every free moment curled by the boombox, the local radio station’s song-request line set to speed dial, the volume knob turned loud enough to hear, but quiet enough not to wake Mom and Dad. Then, finally, the master product: a flawless combination of Alanis Morissette, Nirvana and Boyz II Men decorated, doodled on and packaged in that familiar square case that would become the soundtrack to a fleeting eighth-grade romance.”

The added work required to making a mixtape in comparison to making a playlist on an app makes it infinitely more meaningful to the lucky listener (Olivarez-Giles). This is clearly illustrated in my comic through the emotions being expressed between the giver and receiver in the mix-tape frame. This difference in significance could also be explored through the publicness of playlists on streaming platforms. In my comic one can see that the playlist has multiple followers – which may make it less personal to the person who it was made for in comparison to a private mix-tape.  The Second aspect I considered was the material being of a cassette, vinyl, or even CD in comparison to a digital platform. Much has been written about consumers need to touch to feel fully immersed in its product. Maria Ek Styvén wrote:

“The increased abstraction of digitized products may lead to feelings of non-authenticity (Featherman et al., 2006), which could contribute to views of digital files as having lower emotional and monetary value than their physical counterparts (Fox, 2004 ;  McCourt, 2005).” 

This contrast is only magnified when one considers not only how the personalization and materiality affect the relationship but in how the limitations of the medium do as well. Styven wrote:

“From tangible items that one cherishes and sorts in alphabetical order, recorded music is becoming fluid and ubiquitous, to be consumed like water”.

This fast and easy consumption of music is where streaming services fail its listeners. With Streaming services, it becomes more and more common for listeners to skip around and not listen to songs in their intended order. This relates to both personal playlists as well as full albums (Tassell 2). When considering the loss in the ability touch, personalize, show effort, and patience in affording the artist/creator their vision one can see that streaming and digital music platforms will never hold as much meaning to a listener as its physical counterpart.

References

Bennett, Jessica. “Love Me, Love My Mix Tape.” Newsweek 151.12 (2008): N/a. Web.

Olivarez-Giles, Nathan. “Why Cassette Tapes Are Making a Comeback; How Justin Bieber, The Weeknd and Other Artists Are Sending the Humble Cassette Tape on a Comeback Tour. Plus: Mix Tapes in the Movies.” Wall Street Journal (Online) [New York, N.Y.] 09 Mar. 2017: N/a. Web.

Styvén, Maria Ek. “The Need to Touch: Exploring the Link between Music Involvement and Tangibility Preference.” Journal of Business Research 63.9 (2010): 1088-094. Web.

Tassell, Nige. “Cassette Culture.” The Word (2012): 58-63. Web.